A blog about tabletop hobby and or strategy games, with a side order of electronic turn based goodness here and there. Now with tons of retro gaming content both electronic and tabletop. Also with 20% more self loathing douchebaggery!

Friday, March 22, 2013

This fortnight's patch brought us the Jagermech, a 65 ton mech that in tabletop is mostly known for being super sucky and ugly. In MWO it is improved!

There were other things too so let's get up in it!

A note on winning: Wins require kills. Equal kills but time running out will be a tie even if one side has more captured of a point than the other at least in Assault.

Still pimpin the X 5 Hero Cicada and showing the new camo type plus more silly cockpit toys. But there are 3 big changes. Control options which make the game play like a terrible console game such as the Mechwarrior 2 PS1 port.

Trust me. Go into the Options and unclick both those bottom checks. Throttle Decay means you have to hold throttle down or you slow and stop, and Arm Lock keeps your arm weapons locked to your torso which is also bad. The whole benefit of arm weapons is the extended traverse they have.

The new map, the utterly awesome Tourmaline Desert. Kind of warm but so pretty to look at and so many places to hide and fight.

A big feature of this map is the crashed ships you find laying about, the wreckage strewn across the field.

Downed mechs.

Crashed ships.

But what was LURM DAY?

LRMs weren't working right for 2 days or so with this patch, again becoming unstoppable avatars of head destroying explosive death.

Many matches went like this. Some for me, some against.

Too much damage.

You see, the current MWO metagame is long range sniping and shooting. LRMs were made super powerful even beyond the usual overwhelming power and popularity of PPC and Gauss weapons.

The Jagermech is the other big update (besides PGI's odd programming.. deficiencies) this time.

The A is overall the best, though they are all decent. Not great, but... decent. The problem is their stock builds are all terrible. Even in tabletop the Jagermech was awful. Though PGI continues to make every mech look light years better.

Some beauty shots including in cockpit views. And a terrible build with an XL engine. Note me being my usual jerk in MWO self but in a way that is pointing out terrible things large organizations that are supposed to be in the public interest have done, or hidden others' doings. :(

You will also note the Jagers are all showing new weapon mounts. This is another change. They are starting to show mechs equipped with the loadouts they have. Right now only the Jager and Catapult have this feature but apparently PGI is gonna add this to as many mechs as possible. Eventually.

And the final most controversial addition is CONSUMABLES. "Pay to Win" items some of which are RL money, others you can use C Bills for. Also with GXP uses to make them work better.

These are the two GXP modules.

And these disposable modules. Now "Mastering" a mech is important for the extra module slot to utilize.

Still lots of random bugs in the odd match. Map issues, HUD issues.

A cool picture of incoming missile fire plus the Tag/Narc bonus you can get for using said deviced. Even if Narc is terrible in every way. (Speaking of which the "Savior Kill" from last update: you get this by helping to kill an enemy mech while it is fighting one of your teammates the enemy player has gotten to the internal structure.)

I am overall happy with this patch even with the temporary LRM superboost that they removed today.

PGI needs to fix a LOT of these random bugs that are still popping up on us though.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Sadly the time to set up and get teams made only left time to play the first half of the first scenario. But it helped me see a few things I may need to tweak in the campaign rules and was a good introduction to classic 40K in the days before Games Workshop became the enormous choadmonglers they are today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnPpfs120DA

But on to the show:
(PS: Click for large if you would like. Especially if you are from #tinypewtermen on irc.synirc.net and don't realize my pictures get bigger.)

Monday, March 18, 2013

One thing to do when setting up your campaign is to have fun missions full of fluff for the PCs to go on. Being a semi RPG players may, can, and WILL mess up all your plans with backstabbing, machinations, bad die rolls, or being ingenious SOBs who ruin everything you carefully set up because of inspired ideas.

So these missions have to generally be a rough guideline and have options as to what to do if the glorious band of idiots you will love to hate known as YOUR PLAYERS ignore the obvious.

To be sure if the players choose to not go on the missions you assign them there is little you can do, but most RPG campaigns have enough of an unwritten social contract where they will at least try to work with you.

So let's get on with the first 2 missions! I have a Player side and a GM side so things like background events, secret things happening, and ideas on how to proceed if the script gets scrapped when your Plot Train gets derailed happens have a place. Show your players the Player side and keep the GM side for your own evil ends...

I haven't listed the basic plot of these early missions because this would give people options to make it their own. But in general this is my rough layout:

1-6: PCs get together to train. Mad Arbite commander decides to rebel and most planetary forces join him. PCs fight to get to Techmarine Landale who will lead them out of the training fortress through some tunnels as a presumably loyal Arbite screws them over. They will then escape the planet in a dropship to get to the Revenger of Vengeance.

7-11: PCs retake the Revenger. Make a beachead, free loyalists on board, capture weapons, engineering, and then the bridge.

12-24: Planets in Need: Two different planets ask for help against other rebellions. One by what will be found out to be a Genestealer Cult, the other Chaos. If the GS Cult is taken on first, it means the Chaos rebellion ends up having to be fought second as Chaos Marine and Demon forces. If Chaos, the GS Cult is instead Tyranids.

25-30: Retake original planet: The Arbite commander needs to be stopped, as does the Imperator Titan he will be unearthing. The final fight should be in the Titan's control room. Defeating him should lead to his puppetmasters arriving and making things miserable/letting players know they didn't really accomplish anything. Your choice based on what sorts of minis you have access to. Tau? Eldar? Dark Eldar? More Chaos? Incredibly clever Orks? A powerplay by a couple loyalist Marine factions to take over the Ultima Segmentum for its own good?

Oh yeah. Scenario 1 and 2. In image form so you get a sweet 40K type font for the fluffy bits. (Casablanca Antique)

I am guessing my first two scenarios will make for an evening's play. Hell, the first one alone might do it! But just to be sure I have the second ready to go. I might even get 3-4 written tomorrow just to have them ready.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

This is the second part where I awkwardly smoosh together rules from both Rogue Trader and 2nd edition 40K into something resembling a playable game by also taking stuff from later editions.

And then jamming a simple RPG system into it.

I am a very silly person who seems to like wasting time on these sorts of things...

Updated 22 March 2013

Rules and
Rules Changes:

Initiative/Turn
Order:

At
the start of each encounter (when appropriate) each player rolls a D6
and adds their characters' Initiative value to this roll. The GM
does the same for whatever opposing forces (OpFor) are in the mission
if any. Ties are rolled off.

Going
in order of highest to lowest each Player and each GM unit does their
Move and then Shoot Phases in order. After all players and OpFor
have taken their turns, Close Combat happens as one gigantic melee
then everyone may make Rally checks at the end of the turn.

(This
does mean there can be multiple units charging and then getting
charged in return.)

Movement:

As
in 2nd
ed rulebook.

Shooting:

As
in 2nd
ed rulebook.

Overwatch:
When going into Overwatch you will not be able to fire until the
next FULL turn. So if you go into Overwatch you may NOT fire until
the next turn begins. (This keeps players from going on OW when they
win initiative and just camping all day long.)

Close
Combat:

As
in the Assault
Phase
section of the 5th
or 6th
edition rulesbook. (5th
ed minibook is pages 36-45.)

Changes
to the rules from said book:

The
To Hit
chart is the one from Rogue Trader.

As
this is RT/2nd edition, units are not allowed to shoot before
charging.

Weapons
with the Parry
ability may cause a reroll of an enemy attack die thrown against them
but only once per weapon with this ability per Close Combat phase.

Psychology
and Morale:

As
in 2nd
edition outside of the Close Combat rules.

Psionics:

As
in Rogue Trader. (Pages 48-52) Will and Cool are considered to be the model's Ld value.

Post Game
Sequence/Advancement

After
a mission has been one or lost the GM may decide it is time to have a
Post Game. (Some missions may be multiple battles or may have a
win/loss effect which keeps the adventure going and thus these
following events will not happen yet.)

The
sequence is as follows:

1:
Roll for survivors and injuries.

2:
Roll for scavenge.

3:
Use Destiny Points if mission failed or Player Character is dead.

4:
If won, get an Experience Point plus 2d6 Requisition Points and D10
Force Points.
4a: It is HIGHLY recommended that each mission also have some sort of Requisition Point bonus. Probably 10-20 a mission.

5:
If 5, 10, 20, 40, or 80 Experience Points have been attained, the
Player Character levels up.

Rolling
for Survivors:

For
each lost model, players roll 1d6 against Toughness. If this roll is
higher than the model's Toughness or a 6 the model is Dead and must
either be replaced with Requisition Points or done without until more
RP has been earned. If the roll is equal to the model's T they are
“Injured” and unavailable for the next mission plus lose any
purchased equipment except for Armor or their default weapon.

A
Player Character who suffers a Dead result loses a Destiny Point
instead.

If
the Players lose the mission and the GM decides they have a chance to
possibly recover their fallen, the D6 Survivor Roll is instead D6-1.

For
vehicles the damage result will show if it is possible to recover and
repair it. If the damage result that took it out clearly shows it to
be a destroyed wreck it cannot be repaired. If it was merely
disabled in a manner that could be fixed, it will be unavailable for
the next mission and will cost D6x5 Requisition Points to repair it.

Scavenging:

Scavenging
when allowed after a mission gives the winning Players a chance to
recover anything useful off of the corpses of the fallen. Roll under
each Player Characters' INT with a 2D6 roll. If this roll is under
the INT they find D3 useful items at the GM's discretion.

(Such
as Wargear, special weapons, ect. An Imperial or Eldar campaign
clearly wouldn't allow the recovery of Chaos wargear to be used by
the players.)

Use
Destiny Points:
A Player Character who has died MUST spend a Destiny Point. If a PC
has lost a mission they also lose a Destiny Point. If a PC has no
more Destiny Points, the Character and his or her forces are removed
from the campaign and a new Character and unit must be generated by
the player.

Victory
Goodies:

If
the Player was on the winning side he or she gains 1 Experience
Point, 2D6 Requisition Points, and 1D10 Force Points. Depending on
the mission and GM fiat, there may be additional rewards.

Character
Advancement:

After
5, 10, 20, 40, and 80 Experience Points have been earned (keep
running total. EP does not reset upon advancement.) the Character
levels up with the following rewards:

When
a PC earns a Special Ability, he rolls on the chart. If a result
rolled is one they already have, the PC instead earns 40 Requisition Points, 15 Force Points, and an extra Destiny Point.

1:
Fearless: PC and any squad he is attached to now never have to fall
back and pass any Morale check automatically.

2:
Feel No Pain: The PC upon losing his last Wound in combat ignores
the wounding hit on a 4+ provided the Strength of the attack is not
double his Toughness.

3:
Fleet of Foot: The PC may move an extra D6” when alone, or when
with a squad it is D3”.

4:
Furious Charge: The PC gets +1 I and S when they charge into Close
Combat.

5:
Preferred Enemy X: The PC may choose an enemy type/race/faction.
They now may reroll 1 missed hit in Close Combat each Close Combat
Phase.

6:
Stealthy: The PC is -1 to hit in Ranged Combat provided he has
Cover.

7:
Tank Hunter: The PC now adds +1 to her Armor Penetration Rolls, and
adds +1 to his squad's AP rolls if attached.

8:
Wide Deployment: Any unit the PC is part of or joined now has their
Squad Coherency increased by 1”.

9:
Infiltrator: The PC and any unit she is part of or decides to start
the mission attached to may either start 2d6” further into the
battlefield, or may start “Hidden” if behind cover in the normal
Deployment Zone.

10:
Agressive Commander: When rolling for Turn Initiative at the start
of a mission the PC rolls 2D6 and takes the highest.

11:
Warp Resistant: The PC is considered to be +1 to their Ld for all
Willpower checks against Psychic effects hostile to them.

12:
Protector: The PC may reroll her Death result after a mission, or
if he had 1 Wound remaining or more at the end of the mission he may
make the first Death result rolled on his troopers be ignored.

-------------------------------------------------

Well, this is pretty much it currently for my rules. Its juuust enough to add some depth and flavor while taking the 40K rules I like best. It generally doesn't look like it will work for any sort of non GMed game but for what I have in mind it will do nicely.

Yes. You see with the recent cheap release of the Ultramarines CGI Blu Ray movie and my Gamma World game getting off to a rocky start I want to do SOMETHING campaign related but I also adore miniatures and like old school 40K even if Games Workshop is the buttiest butt that ever butted a butt.

So why not smoosh together some Rogue Trader and 2nd edition 40K stuff, print out the bits I like, and make a RPGish campaign ala my old Silent Death Star Wars TIE Fighter campaign?

I have all the minis one would need, I have all the books. Being the GM means I can cut out all the stupid, the overcomplicated, and the cheesy from RT-2nd ed and make it a quick and fun RPG Lite experience!

Let's get the party started!

(Note this will be added to as I get around to bringing in more factions and as we possibly find what works and does not.)

Also currently the army lists are from the "Black Codex" that came in the 2nd edition box. Cheap, balanced, fun, and portable.

Warhammer 40K RPG Battle Campaign

The Imperium is dying. A Daemon Lord known as “Gideon” attacked
Holy Terra. While he was defeated and the most Blessed Emperor still
guards Mankind upon his Golden Throne, foul Xeno forces used the
battle as an excuse to all but vaporize everything else upon the
planet.

Psykers screamed, reality warped, and many heretics say the galaxy is
“back as it should be”.

The Imperium needs valiant units of Space Marines, Imperial
Guardsmen, Adeptus Sororitas, Inquisitors, Assassins, and Arbites to
protect the Imperium in our most desperate hour since the time the
Emperor walked amongst us.

Rebellions need to be put down, ships retaken, the cleansing of taint
throughout the galaxy.

Small teams will be formed and sent out. Capture lost and stolen
technologies. Put the heretic, the mutant, the unclean to the
cleansing fires of the Emperor's Will.

Basic Concepts:

This
will be a quasi RPG miniatures campaign where players control at most
2-3 squads of 2nd
edition Warhammer 40K Black Codex Imperial (and optionally Squat &
Eldar though with some tweaks it could even be used to run Ork or
Chaos campaigns. For our initial purposes we are presuming Imperial
however.) forces with a Champion
level character as each player's avatar within the game, either in
direct command of a squad, or as a separate character commanding his
or her forces. (Allowing for such things as a Chaplain or
Librarian.)

Rules
will be a hybrid of 1st
(Rogue Trader) and 2nd
edition 40K with the odd thing nicked from later editions. The 40K
universe will be closer to its original Rogue Trader era settings as
the initial story concept basically says that when Terra was attacked
reality subtly shifted though few people know about it.

Players
will earn points to make their forces somewhat larger in size but in
general each player will never have more than 500 points of 2nd
ed 40K forces. Their characters will potentially level up 5 times, 2
times into Minor
and Major Hero
statlines, and 3 more which will be options to gain special perks and
equipment.

Characters
will also have Destiny
Points
which will be used to survive otherwise fatal events, or which get
removed upon failing missions.

Game Session
Outline

Players
will be given a mission to complete by the GM. They will then go do
said mission. If successful they gain an Experience Point. If not
they do not plus lose a Destiny Point. (Usually.) Upon winning if
possible rolls are made to see what they recovered from the
battlefield and what happened to their troopers who may have fallen
in battle. After this Requisition
Points
may be spent to replace fallen troopers or to buy new ones up to the
maximum level of Force Points that player has.

Character
Generation:

In
general each player has 330 2nd
edition 40K points to build his force. If a Champion
class character is chosen it may be the upgrade or normal choice for
a squad. If he or she is not the command upgrade for a squad, the
purchased squad can NOT have the Champion upgrade.

No other characters may be purchased at creation. (So if you start
out as a Veteran Sergeant in a Space Marine Scout squad you could not
use your extra points for an Apothecary.)

Each
player has 330 Force
Points
for the maximum size of their force in combat. Any additional points
not spent or gained during play are part of your storage called
Requisition
Points.
Force Points are the maximum you may bring INTO a battle.
Requisition is how much you have to replace casualties or buy new
units.

Force Points are increased through advancement.

Characters start with 3 Destiny Points.

Characters also gain 1 new Stat. Intelligence (INT). This stat is
5+1d6.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Mechwarrior Online keeps trucking along. It plays faster and is generally a lot more stable than it was but.. for every improvement there are a couple flubs along the way. Sadly the newest one might be a killer.

It will be easier to just let that one be a thing you read yourself. But while it IS nice that PGI is taking feedback on this, adding in a "pay to win" buff/money sink (both RL and in game money) like this is kind of messed up. It just means veteran or wealthy players get an even BIGGER leg up on new players who already get the shaft. Between the AWFUL "Trial" mechs, inexperience in playing the game, not having a group of friends coordinating and playing together (which is 80% of the fun really. Playing with Something Awful Goons is a BLAST. 6 AM EST. 6-8 of us in Mumble. 4 active players. Everyone else kibitzing. Someone has a stream of music going on some of us are listening to. WE ALL START SINGING Don't Stop Believin' BY JOURNEY. YESSS!), and the inexperience of making good mechs or having the resources to do so PLUS the whole XP trees that improve a player's mech as he or she uses it and buys other mechs of that chassis core means they are SOL.

Which means new players, the lifeblood of any game probably won't enjoy things at all and will leave, making it an ever decreasing number of veteran players who will eventually get too good and too bored with the game, moving on.

BAD NEWS.

But let's get to new pictures full of all the new stuff MWO has added since my last post, in rough order.

Our first major change is the addition of the Trebuchet, a 50 ton Medium mech. It.. kind of sucks. It is to the Medium class what the Awesome is to the Assault. Not fun to play and kind of useless in spite of having a really great model. This game basically has THE best renditions of Battletech's mecha ever. In fact I would say their graphic redesigns should be retconned as the canonical looks. (Something I really cannot say Mechwarrior Tactics' mecha redesigns are. Though theirs are still better than the old Mechwarrior Dark Age minis..)

I chose to make the Centurion my Medium class mech to master even though it has been in the game for a while now. Its small, relatively fast, and it can be quite durable for such a little mech. The general strategy is to use the arms as shields and put nothing in them and run a Standard class engine. A really good player can make this setup SING.

(Also note some interface changes and shading on the buttons. Sadly you STILL can't move mechs around your mechbay.)

Since I want to Elite/Master the mech variant above I need 2 other Centurions. This one has PPCs in the arm which while ruining the whole toughness of the Cent, does make for a nice sniper assistant. And being an arm mount means I can shoot them at an angle which lead to this awesome shot on our newest map...

ALPINE PEAKS! A massive map designed for future 12 on 12 battles this map is full of wide open vistas, tons of hills and mountains, and it makes for a map many players hate. I enjoy it. It keeps close in brawlers from owning the game, while still preventing your average long range sniper mech from dominating. It encourages players to take a variety of mechs and loadouts and helps keep things from being too ONE MECH TO RULE THEM ALL.

It is a fun map that I really don't understand the hate it gets. To be sure some builds kind of take it on the chin here right now but with the continual weapons rebalancing and the like the map will get respected, especially if PGI does some more tweaking to the map as they have the others. Heck, some weapons like the PPC now have extra effects such as eliminating ECM on a target for a few seconds after impact!

These two pictures are just me ranting about a little something I REALLY need to do a full blog post about sometime: NAMING YOUR CHARACTERS IN GAMES. Both offline and on, tabletop and electronic, some people just take offensive or unimaginative names that instantly make one want to hate on or even "Team Kill" (GUILTY!) people who do them. In MWO tons of people have Clan or Great House last names if not as close as possible to an actual in canon character. This is terrible and idiotic. Don't do it. And deal with the mockery you rightfully deserve for helping to break game immersion and showing how creatively bankrupt you are.

These two pictures show a change to the base capture setup. Now a colored set of beams replace the ground coloration and change colors based on who is capturing or captured a point. And the bit of objective itself now has animation on it, like a working mining platform with spraying dirt and electrical arcs. Nice!

Here is the new main interface page showing a couple of additions. Another Hero mech, a Cicada variant that fails to impress. More cockpit ornaments, and another Camo style. The big change is a place with targets so you can try out your mech build without anything shooting at you. They are immobile targets but this is nice. It also gives "Mathwarriors" a place to test out game mechanics properly. Perhaps it is the start of a solo mode or AI enemies? Let me dream man. LET ME DREAM.

We even have new scoring objectives for more XP and C Bills. The "Saviour Kill". I am not quite sure how one earns it, but it involves helping someone out in killing a target. Which is how most people play anyhow. But it is nice to speed things up and encourage more team tactics instead of being a solo type.

The end match status is now different too. Shows you a more in depth set of results. And gives players a chance to talk post match. Which hardly anyone ever does though.

You can also talk during the neato animated mech startup sequence. UncommonGray has a neat macro. If not the neatest.

Some things still haven't changed. The "Frozen City" map still has random texture issues. Usually it is part of the terrain, once in a while its the mechs. The game is much less buggy than it was but.. bugs still abide.

And it hits other maps from time to time.

There has been a new built in "Ranking" Matchmaker that tries to put players of a general skill level together. With my Centurion grinding it usually leads me to losing horribly but this match..

And this one during "Prime Time" for North American players shows I can still sometimes kick butt like a boss.

And now the MWO website shows you more stats. However it is mostly just recording the recent events right now so the listings are not totally accurate. And this sadly shows how my Centurion playing is having a negative impact on said stats as my previous Kill/Death Ratio was around 1.76 has dropped to 1.67. In the long run these sorts of numbers will help PGI make a better balanced game.

You know, if they don't screw it up with the stuff I showed in the first link.